Citi Expands Online Chat to Improve Customer Service

Citigroup Inc. plans to test live text chat on its website for customers in Mexico, India, Australia and the Philippines in early 2016, as part of a bid to improve customer satisfaction as more banking interactions move online. The bank has been using chat in the U.S. since 2009, to help Web customers transfer funds, apply for loans and other financial transactions. Chat sessions, although accounting for just 7% of customer interactions overall, provide data about behavior that helps the bank refine online services and procedures.

Every refinement helps as established banks face increased competition from digital upstarts intent on luring away customers with mobile apps for digital payments, money management and other services.

At the same time, consumers used to quick, intuitive e-commerce transactions now expect similar service from banks, said Dawn Cooper, who, as global head of client at Citigroup, helps lead customer experience worldwide for the bank. “So many clients are going online and they need help and real-time responsiveness,” Ms. Cooper said.

Analyzing how and when customers use Citi’s text chat feature, provided by LivePerson, has helped the bank identify trouble spots where instructions or processes could be improved, she said.

For example, customers routinely activated text chat when they wanted to link separate accounts, such as a personal loan and a credit card, and didn’t know how, she said. Seeing that, Citi changed its process to have agents ask customers when they set up accounts whether they want to link them. “You study chats like calls,” she said, and make fixes so customers “don’t have to reach out and ask for help.”

Citi recently started a project to improve and unify the way customers globally view the bank, including trying to make its Net Promoter Scores consistent across geographies, Ms. Cooper said. Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a benchmark for customer satisfaction that measures how likely a customer is to recommend a company to others.

Citi’s score has steadily increased since 2009. But in relation to rivals, it has remained near the bottom of the 13 banks tracked by Satmetrix Systems Inc., a software company that manages the widely used NPS program.

“Ease of use, ease of doing business, ease of getting help – these have a brand value,” said Laura Brooks, vice president of innovation and strategy at Satmetrix Systems. Ms. Brooks co-created the NPS in 2000.

Technology can help Citi improve NPS and overall customer satisfaction, Ms. Cooper said. Specifically, instant text chat can provide “smooth, quick interactions” with customers when they hit a stumbling block online that would otherwise require a call to customer support or a trip to a branch, she said. “It’s not that any channel will go away. But we’re starting to see people want to react in real-time and on their own terms.”

Citi uses LivePerson software in more than 70 spots online, such as paying a bill, increasing a credit line and opening an account, Ms. Cooper said..

The tests in Mexico and other countries will require Citi to hire or retrain customer service agents with different skills than phone agents, Ms. Cooper said. Agents need excellent writing skills and the ability to control the conversation. “Clients don’t want to do chit chat or talk about the weather the way they might on a phone call.”

Correction: Dawn Cooper, global head of client at Citigroup Inc., helps lead customer experience globally for the bank. An earlier version of this story said she oversees customer experience globally for the bank.